My new variety of lily plant originated as a seedling which first flowered at Sandy, Oreg., in 1970 from seeds grown with the object of producing large flowered, upright and semi-upright Oriental hybrids in shades of soft pink and white suited to forcing into flower out of season, heretofore unknown in the lily breeding art. The seeds by which I achieved the desired objective resulted from my crossing the clonal variety `Fair Lady` as the seed parent, the pollen parent being a selected form of the species Lilium nobilissimum. In order to cross these distantly related lilies successfully, it was necessary to maintain extremely high greenhouse temperatures for one week after pollination.
The flowers of this new lily are characterized by an upright to semi-upright orientation, extremely large size and broad tepalled, bowl-shaped form, unusually thick substance and a distinctive pure white coloration accented by magenta-rose spots, a combination unique among Oriental hybrid lilies. The new plant possesses unusually strong, stout stems with exceptionally broad leaves and its clone possesses to a high degree the desirable characteristics of hybrid vigor, great hardiness and disease resistance, possessing all of the desired characteristics of excellence of form, color and habit. Also, the clone is vigorous and a good grower and propagator as observed at Sandy, Oreg. This plant is well suited to forcing out of season when the bulbs are dug at the appropriate time and properly precooled; late October-dug bulbs, properly precooled and potted in January, will flower under glass in western Oregon, with no supplementary lighting and at moderate greenhouse temperatures, in an average of about 100 to 115 days.
My new variety of lily plant has been asexually reproduced by me and under my direction at Sandy, Oreg., and successive generations produced by natural propagation from bulblets, by bulb scale propagation, and by tissue culturing from bulb scale explants, have demonstrated that the novel and distinctive characteristics of this lily variety hold true under asexual propagation from generation to generation and appear to be firmly fixed.